A one-day symposium on the Mechanics of Development will be held on June 21, 2011, immediately prior to the 2011 Summer Bioengineering Conference in Farmington, Pennsylvania. This symposium will be the Third US National Symposium on Frontiers in Biomechanics, which is sponsored by the US National Committee on Biomechanics (USNCB). The emerging fields of developmental mechanics, synthetic biology, and tissue engineering have stimulated increased interest in the physical aspects of development, a topic that has been largely ignored during the last two decades. This meeting will bring together developmental biologists, bioengineers, and biophysicists to discuss recent advances in this new field and how new collaborations can attack specific problems in embryonic development. The main objectives of this meeting are (1) to foster collaborations between engineers and developmental biologists;(2) to stimulate interest among engineers in embryonic development;and (3) to define problems in developmental biology that deserve more attention in the future, especially those problems that are relatively unknown or underappreciated by the engineering community. At this meeting, speakers will discuss how they attack specific problems in embryonic development, as well as what they feel are the most important areas for future study. Expanded research in these topics would greatly benefit the health of our society by leading, for example, to new treatments for diseases from the embryo to old age. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Research into the physical aspects of tissue and organ development can lead to new treatments for various diseases from the embryo to old age. The symposium on the Mechanics of Development will gather leading biologists, bioengineers, and biophysicists to discuss recent advances in this field and how new collaborations can attack specific problems. This meeting proposes to bring together both prominent researchers and young investigators from these three fields seeking new areas of collaboration and research.